Tangerine Toad Teaches The Teachers

Our friend Tangerine Toad has kept his perch on The Toad Stool but has branched out to post on Marketing Profs Daily Fix, a site aimed at bringing together marketing professionals with college marketing and advertising professors.
Toad’s first post is a perfect summary of his argument that Your Brand Is Not My FriendTM:

Now there are some brands—I call them Prom King Brands—that people don’t mind “conversing” with, so long as they can do it in the brands own space (as opposed to MySpace.) These are the brands that have somehow managed to build a better mousetrap, but there are no more than a dozen of them and you here on DailyFix can probably name them all by heart (I’ll start: Nike, Apple, Starbucks, Virgin, Whole Foods… ) Sports teams, TV shows, rock bands and movies fall into this category as well.
The rest of you are out of luck. You’re not a Prom King and people aren’t lining up to hang with you. So while Starbucks could probably start a Frappuccino Lovers Group on Facebook (for all I know, they already have), no one’s going to be joining a Maxwell House Lovers group anytime soon.

Read the whole thing. It’s a perfect take on the frenzy that’s surrounding social media, buzz marketing and all the “two-way consumer conversation” talk. I hope the professors are paying attention.

Blogging on AdPulp since 2005, Dan Goldgeier is a Seattle-based freelance copywriter with experience at advertising agencies across the U.S. He is a graduate of the Creative Circus ad school, and currently teaches at Seattle's School of Visual Concepts. In addition, he is a regular columnist for TalentZoo.com. Dan published the best of his TalentZoo.com columns in a book entitled View From The Cheap Seats: A Broader Look at Advertising, Marketing, Branding, Global Politics, Office Politics, Sexual Politics, and Getting Drunk During a Job Interview. Look for it on Amazon in paperback and e-book editions.

http://adpulp.com David Burn

This is great. Now we simply need a workable way to tell Brand Manager X that he is not, in fact, a Prom King.

http://tangerinetoad.blogspot.com Tangerine Toad

Hey Danny- thanks for the shout-out.
Much appreciated.
I’m very curious to see what– and where– the Daily Fix thing takes me.
Especially since my goal is to eventually start consulting as per your “We’re Ad People First, Bloggers Second” post today
TT
PS: Did you guys see that Karen from 22 Squared responded to our posts/comments on The Toad Stool today? Check it out.

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